The Literary Remains | Page 8

sensible experience to aid our will by the vividness of
sensible impressions, and also to aid our understanding of the truths
revealed,--not to increase the conviction of their certainty where they
have been understood.

WALTON'S APPENDIX.
Ib. p. 116.
It is a strange blind story this of the last three books, and of Hooker's
live relict, the Beast without Beauty. But Saravia?--If honest Isaac's
account of the tender, confidential, even confessional, friendship of
Hooker and Saravia be accurate, how chanced it that Hooker did not
entrust the manuscripts to his friend who stood beside him in his last
moments? At all events, Saravia must have known whether they had or
had not received the author's last hand. Why were not Mr. Charke and
the other Canterbury parson called to account, or questioned at least as
to the truth of Mrs. Joan's story? Verily, I cannot help suspecting that

the doubt cast on the authenticity of the latter books by the high church
party originated in their dislike of portions of the contents.--In short, it
is a blind story, a true Canterbury tale, dear Isaac! [2]

OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.
Pref. c. iii. 7. p. 182.
The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corruptions,
wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical
government established.
How readily would this, and indeed all the disputes respecting the
powers and constitution of Church government have been settled, or
perhaps prevented, had there been an insight into the distinct nature and
origin of the National Church and the Church under Christ! [3] To the
ignorance of this, all the fierce contentions between the Puritans and
the Episcopalians under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, all the errors and
exorbitant pretensions of the Church of Scotland, and the heats and
antipathies of our present Dissenters, may be demonstrably traced.
Ib. 9. p. 183.
Pythagoras, by bringing up his scholars in the speculative knowledge of
numbers, made their conceits therein so strong, that when they came to
the contemplation of things natural, they imagined that in every
particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the
elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a
thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their
mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if
nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the creatures of God.
I am not so conversant with the volumes of Duns Scotus as to be able
to pronounce positively whether he is an exception, but I can think of
no other instance of high metaphysical genius in an Englishman.
Judgment, solid sense, invention in specialties, fortunate anticipations
and instructive foretact of truth,--in these we can shew giants. It is

evident from this example from the Pythagorean school that not even
our incomparable Hooker could raise himself to the idea, so rich in
truth, which is contained in the words
'numero, pondere, et mensura generantur coeli et terra'.
O, that Hooker had ever asked himself concerning will, absolute will,
[Greek: ho arithmòs hyperaríthmiòs], 'numerus omues numeros ponens,
nunquam positus!' [4]
Ib. p. 183.
When they of the 'Family of Love' have it once in their heads, that
Christ doth not signify any one person, but a quality whereof many are
partakers, &c.
If the Familists thought of Christ as a quality, it was a grievous error
indeed. But I have my doubts whether this was not rather an inference
drawn by their persecutors.
Ib. 15. p. 191.
When instruction doth them no good, let them feel but the least degree
of most mercifully-tempered severity, they fasten on the head of the
Lord's vicegerents here on earth, whatsoever they any where find
uttered against the cruelty of blood-thirsty men, and to themselves they
draw all the sentences which Scripture hath in favor of innocency
persecuted for the truth.
How great the influence of the age on the strongest minds, when so
eminently wise a man as Richard Hooker could overlook the obvious
impolicy of inflicting punishments which the sufferer himself will
regard as merits, and all who have any need to be deterred will extol as
martyrdom! Even where the necessity could be plausibly pretended, it
is war, not punitive law;--and then Augustine's argument for Sarah!
Ib. c. iv. 1. p. 194.

We require you to find out but one church upon the face of the whole
earth, that hath been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been
ordered by ours, that is to say, by episcopal regiment, sithence the time
that the blessed apostles were here conversant.
Hooker was so good a man that it would be wicked to suspect him of
knowingly playing the sophist. And yet strange it is, that he should not
have been aware that it